Search results for

“Harmony has been at the center of our musical experience and expression from the very beginning,” says mandolinist/singer Lincoln Mick. “Often, when we’re unsure of what to do next, we’ll say, ‘Let’s just all sing together.’ We’ve changed a lot as a band over the years, but harmony has always been the backbone of what we do, which has led us to create all these background vocals that not only support the lead, but have a life and character of their own.” This sense of harmony and hospitality has been central to The Arcadian Wild’s story from its earliest days. Named for a utopian landscape in Greek mythology, the group got its start roughly a decade ago, when Isaac Horn and Lincoln Mick met as choir students at Nashville’s Lipscomb University. While both had grown up on alt-rock and punk, they quickly bonded over a shared love for American roots music and the endless possibilities that lay beyond the boundaries of tradition and expectation. In January 2020, Horn and Mick welcomed fiddler Bailey Warren into the band full-time. Visit: https://www.museumofmakingmusic.org/events/arcadian-wild The Arcadian Wild on Instagram / Facebook

Rumaan Alam’s previous novel was an inspired swirl of suspense, social commentary and apocalyptic disaster. His latest is about a young Black woman working for a uber-rich white philanthropist.

Join us for this heartwarming musical theatre classic! Set in the little village of Anatevka, the story centers on Tevye, a poor milkman, and his five daughters. With the help of a colorful and tight-knit Jewish community, Tevye tries to protect his daughters and instill them with traditional values in the face of changing social mores and the growing anti-Semitism of Czarist Russia. Rich in historical and ethnic detail, Fiddler on the Roof’s universal theme of tradition cuts across barriers of race, class, nationality and religion, leaving audiences crying tears of laughter, joy and sadness. Visit: sdmt.org/shows/fiddler-on-the-roof/https://www.sdmt.org/shows/fiddler-on-the-roof/ San Diego Musical Theatre on Facebook / Instagram

The magnetic bond between Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, partners in life and in music, has always been central to their songs. On their latest album, the "we" becomes existential.

Clinton Davis is an expert in old-time American folk music, and has the authentic roots and musical mastery that allows him to bring it alive, along with the other members of the Clinton Davis Stringband. A fifth-generation Kentuckian, Clinton grew up in rural Carroll County. He is currently based in San Diego. His repertoire spans fiddle and banjo music native to his family home, the exuberant ragtime piano and guitar of early 20th-century New Orleans, and ballad songs and dance music of the Southwest. His prowess across instruments and traditional American styles has gained notice from the standard-bearers of previous generations, and earned him a place amongst a new generation of American folk musicians. Renowned fingerstyle guitarist Stefan Grossman has called him “a master…carrying on the traditional music torch of Mike Seeger.” The Deering Banjo company has called his playing “simply sublime.” No Depression has called his work “a joyous and soulful restoration of American music tradition.” Tim McNalley is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and songwriter from Southern California. While usually seen on the upright and electric bass, he also performs on guitar, keyboards, cello, violin, mandolin, and sitar, a breadth that has allowed him the opportunity to collaborate with artists such as Paul McCartney, Ariana Grande, Adam Melchor, Changuito, Jim Kweskin, and Burt Turetzky. Ryan Finch followed his deep love of music, from his hometown of Bishop, California, up to the Bay Area, and across the country to Boston and back, with plenty of stops along the way. When he eventually decided to pursue the technical side of music production, Ryan moved to San Diego, where he has been engineering and producing artists in the studio. When he is behind a recording console, Ryan also performs on piano, guitar, bass, banjo, and mandolin. He is deeply influenced by varied acoustic music traditions, notably American folk and jazz. For more information visit: sdfolkheritage.org Stay Connected on Facebook and Instagram

The Crooked Jades offers an intense, rich, and somehow modern performance using old-time American folk music. Sing Out! magazine has this to say about The Crooked Jades: “The Jades, in other words, aren’t playing your grandparents’ old-time music. Nor are they performing the stylized stringband music that our revivalist contemporaries adapted four or five decades ago and take to festival stages and recordings into the present moment. This is sepia tones, bent angles, unexpected accents, unanticipated sounds. It’s banjo ukuleles, minstrel banjos, plucked fiddles, bowed basses, Hawaiian slide guitars, harmoniums, Vietnamese jaw harps, pianos played clawhammer-style. It is the familiar embraced by the strange. It is the antique and the modern, in a distinctly idiosyncratic meaning of each. This is a music that feels at once fiercely inside time yet also above and around it. And all of this is accomplished without a hint of rock, electronica, or the other flourishes to which less imaginative folk bands turn when they think they’ve exhausted the language of tradition. Tradition, the Jades insist, speaks in a host of tongues. If you know what you’re doing, you can speak in as many as you’d like, sometimes at once.” www.crookedjades.com

Yiddishland and The House of Israel are honored to host a screening of the silent film “The City without Jews,” a 1924 Austrian masterpiece, directed and produced by H.K. Breslauer. The film is based on a bestselling homonymous dystopian novel by Hugo Bettauer, which portrays the fictional Austrian city of “Utopia” (a thinly-disguised stand-in for Vienna), which passed an antisemitic law, forcing all Jews to leave the country. Although at first the decision was welcomed and met with celebration, as time went by, Utopia’s citizens faced an ongoing economic impoverishment and cultural decline that forced them to reconsider their decision and wonder whether to invite the Jews back. Though darkly comedic in tone and stylistically influenced by German Expressionism, the film nonetheless contains ominous and eerily realistic sequences, such as shots of freight trains transporting Jews out of the city. It is considered to be one of the few surviving Austrian expressionist films, being then the subject of research and interest both in Austria and around the world. We will have the unique opportunity to enjoy live original music by world-renowned Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and silent film pianist Donald Sosin. Alicia Svigals Violinist/composer Alicia Svigals is the world’s leading Klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written music for violinist Itzhak Perlman and has worked with the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Enseler, poet Allen Ginsburgh, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Debbie Friedman and Chava Albershteyn. Svigals was awarded a Foundation for Jewish Culture commission for her original score to the 1918 film The Yellow Ticket and is a MacDowell fellow. With jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer, she recently released Beregovsky Suite a recording of contemporary interpretations of Klezmer music from a long-lost Soviet Jewish archive. Her CD Fidl (1996) reawakened Klezmer fiddle tradition. Her newest CD is Beregovsky Suit: Klezmer Reimagined, with Jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer-an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine. Donald Sosin Pianist/composer Donald Sosin grew up in Rye, New York and Munich, and has performed his scores for silent films, often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton, at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM, the National Gallery, at major film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Telluride, Hollywood, Pordenone, Bologna, Shanghai, Bangkok, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, and Jecheon, South Korea and many college campuses. He has worked with Alexander Payne, Isabella Rossellini, Dick Hyman, Jonathan Tunick, Comden and Green, Martin Charnin, Mitch Leigh, and Cy Coleman, and has played for Mikhael Baryshnikov, Mary Travers, Marni Nixon, David Alan Grier, Howie Mandel, Geula Gill, Donna McKechnie and many others. He records for Criterion, Kino, Milestone, Flicker Alley and European labels, and his scores are heard frequently on TCM. Sosin has had commissions from MoMA, the Chicago Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He lives in rural Connecticut with his family. When: Wednesday May 22 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. PT (8:30-10:30 p.m. CT, 9:30-11:30 p.m. ET) Zoom: Early Bird (available until Wednesday, May 8) $10, $18 if paid after Wednesday, May 8. In cooperation with The Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts and The House of Israel. For more information visit: yiddishlandcalifornia.org Stay Connected on Facebook and Instagram

Join us for an evening of inspired music with violinist, composer, educator and producer Jesús Florido and composer, guitarist, and educator Giovanni Piacentini, These renowned artists will elevate and celebrate a multitude of musical traditions that span the globe with a variety of genres from pop, classical, rock, jazz, Latin, and more. About the Artists Born in Venezuela from Italian ancestry and having lived in the United States since 1989, Jesús Florido has established himself as a versatile musician. His classical training has given him the perseverance and work ethic necessary to succeed in music. His teachers have included Eligiuz Stoiñsky, Larry Shapiro, and Davis Brooks. He also received consistent instruction from Joseph Gingold, Margareth Pardee, and Dorothy DeLay. In addition to classical violin performance, he has studied Afro-Cuban, jazz, rock, and fiddle music. Combined with his Latin American roots, this has produced a unique and eclectic vision of music interpretation. In light of his diverse background, it is unsurprising that Florido's musical influences are unusually varied, incorporating composers and performers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Grapelli, Hendrix, Ponty, Shankar, and Santana. These influences have fueled a passion for musical experimentation and motivated Florido to utilize acoustic and electric violins in his recordings and performances. American fiddler Mark O'Connor recognized Florido when he invited him to teach Latin-style fiddling and improvisation at his Nashville and San Diego camps. Florido has also appeared on CBS Sunday Morning with Mr. O’Connor. As a classical player, he developed a chamber music career with very successful results as a recitalist. His concerts of the complete Mozart Sonatas in 2000 are a performance highlight. Sharing his music through teaching is essential to Florido's daily life. As a founding member of the National System of Youth and Children Orchestras in his native Venezuela, known as "El Sistema," he started teaching very young. A highly sought-after teacher, Florido has conducted workshops and residencies in Venezuela, Brazil, Spain, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and in the U.S. "Music has to be part of every child's development throughout the world," he states. — Featured in the Los Angeles Times in 2021, Giovanni Piacentini is a highly accomplished and recognized Latino guitarist, educator, and composer, celebrated as one of the most prominent of his generation. Recently praised as “paying homage to the important cultural heritage of music in the west” by Forbes magazine, his original music has been described as “…able to encapsulate tiny, winsome worlds as if passing through a gallery of paintings” (Winnipeg free press), and as “Stunningly beautiful with accessible compositional language.”(The Clarinet Magazine). Giovanni has established himself as a significant voice in Latin American classical music. He graduated summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA., earned his MA in Composition under renowned American composer Richard Danielpour and recently earned a Ph.D. degree in Music Composition at the University of California Los Angeles, where he is a Teaching Fellow in music theory and aural skills. In October 2022 he premiered a concerto for guitar and orchestra dedicated and performed by legendary classical guitarist Eliot Fisk with the Orquesta Juvenil Carlos Chavez in Mexico City, Mexico. He was recently appointed Teaching Artist Fellow by the prestigious Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He resides in Los Angeles where he teaches at Mt. San Antonio College, the National Children’s Chorus and the Elemental Music Academy. Stay Connected on Social Media! Facebook & Instagram

Come decide whether you are a storied saint or sinner, or most likely, a delectable mix of both. Lissette Ryan with harp will host and emcee a lively evening of Celtic and other tales. Abled and abetted by some of your favorite suspects, Tyler Turner, JT Moring on guitar, Mindy Donner with Rachel Amov on fiddle, Aunt Li-Anne, and Fred Laskowski. Music and tales to lift your spirits, make the stiff spry again, and inviting you to the land of wonder. And great java to boot. For more information visit: storytellersofsandiego.org Stay Connected on Facebook and Instagram

Companies have waged a quiet revolution in package sizing that they use to squeeze more money out of us. But there’s a weapon to help consumers level the playing field: unit prices.